Featured TV on DVD Review: American Vandal: Season One
February 11, 2019
American Vandal: Season One - Buy from Amazon: DVD
American Vandal is a parody of true crime investigation TV shows like Making a Murderer. The first season won a Peabody award. The second season was its last, as it was canceled. (To be more accurate, it will be its last on Netflix, but it could get a third season somewhere else.) Is it worth checking out on DVD, if you don’t have Netflix? Or is there a reason the show only lasted two seasons?
The show takes place at Hanover High School where a prankster spray painted 27 dicks on 27 cars belonging to the faculty of the school. The initial suspect is Dylan Maxwell, a troublemaker at school with a history of drawing dicks. He is quickly expelled by the school, but Peter Maldonado and Sam Ecklund think there’s more to this than the official story and they film a documentary about the case.
They begin by interviewing Dylan and his friends, the Wayback Boys, who don’t exactly help him look innocent. They also interview teachers, classmates, and more, looking to get to the truth of who really spray painted all of those dicks onto all of those cars.
Why is this show so compelling? It’s a silly concept and the “true crime” at the heart of the show isn’t that intriguing. Yet I found myself fascinated by the show and watched it in one sitting. Part of this has to do with the acting, which is stellar across the board. This is trickier than it looks, because in much of the show, the actors are being forced to talk about incredibly silly things, but have to treat them as if they are life and death issues. (It’s part of the parody of True Crime documentary shows. Usually these crimes are life and death issues.) The three lead cast members, Tyler Alvarez and Griffin Gluck, who play the investigative journalists, and Jimmy Tatro, who plays Dylan, the alleged prankster, are excellent doing this. However, they are not the only ones who stand out. G. Hannelius, who plays the super keen school president, is also a highlight in this area, as is Camille Ramsey, who plays Mackenzie, Dylan’s girlfriend, and many others. Without this high level of acting, then this show would be painful to watch.
That’s not to say this show doesn’t have serious flaws. There are several reasons it makes a lot of sense Dylan is so quickly expelled by the school board and these reasons make Dylan a less than sympathetic subject to follow. This was especially true anytime the show spent an extended time look at the Wayback Boys doing their “pranks”. Additionally, a lot of the humor is rather juvenile, so if you are not interested in listening to people talk about the details of spray painted dicks, then this show isn’t for you.
Oh my god, there are extras. Netflix shows rarely come out on DVD / Blu-ray and when they do, they tend to have no extras. However, there are two featurettes on both disc one and disc two. The first is Point / Counterpoint which has Alex Trimboli’s interview contradicted by members of the Wayback Boys. There is also a 17-minute extended interviews featurette with Dylan Maxwell. Disc two has a 15-minute extended interview with Mr. Krazanski and the full 11-minute School Board Hearing. That’s nearly an hour of extras for an 8-episode season.
American Vandal: Season One was surprisingly engaging and the DVD has better than expected extras. It isn’t quite a Pick of the Week contender, but it is closer that I thought it would be.
Video on Demand
The Show
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Griffin Gluck, Calum Worthy, Jimmy Tatro, G Hannelius, Tyler Alvarez